Well, it was a mixed day for our two new queens of tennis today. Raluca had a very good win, 7-5 6-4 over top 100 Russian Alla Kudriatseva which is 2 years her senior and higher ranked. Very good victory and it will bring her good ranking points! Unfortunately though Sorana had a bad loss to Neha Uberoi in the same tournament (Fes WTA) which was unexpected being as Uberoi was a lucky loser and lost quite easily to Raluca on the last round of qualification... Raluca seems to be much the more consistent of the two just now and her ranking is reflecting that...

Meanwhile, with the other players...

Great 2 weeks for 15 year old Simona Halep! She won two ITF tournaments in Bucuresti without any difficulties and she gains her first WTA ranking inside the top 900. She definitely seems to be a one to watch on the future! I've seen some photos of her and she is very physically in good shape for such a young player, muscle and so on. For sure it seems like it would give her an edge over her rivals, so often we saw good Romanian juniors not advance in senior competition because they are not physically fit enough to make the transition (Niculescu and Gojnea are two I think of straight away)

Madalina Gojnea lost R1 of 75K Zagreb challenger to Iekaterina Ivanova... Not unexpected because Ivanova is ranked above her by around 40 places, but she really had no problems to beat Madalina and I find it disappointing that it seems Madi couldn't even push her, this was not such a hard first round as she could have had. Madi was such a good junior but she just can't step out and her time is running shorter... Something needs to be changed and to me it seems as though she would need a different coach because she is too talented to stay at 200.

Monica Niculescu lost straight sets to Yvonne Meusberger in the same tourney, but Yvonne was 3rd seed so that always looked to be a tough match for her.

Monica had a better week last week at 75K in Lebanon:
$75,000 Jounieh Lebanon
C75 07 May 2007 to 12 May 2007 Entry : DA Clay (O)
32 W Nina BRATCHIKOVA (RUS) 6-0 6-1
16 W Joanna SAKOWICZ (POL) 3-6 6-4 7-6(4)
QF L Laura POUS-TIO (ESP) 2-6 6-3 2-6
Two good wins and a good performance against Pous-Tio who is a good claycourter.
Madi also reached QF, had a very good win over Nagy but then lost to a Slovak player ranked almost 100 below her...

Raluca rises to closer top 100 after her SF in Fes!
Many Romanian girls will play qualies on RG this week, I'll keep an update on their progress for anyone that is interested!
If anyone wanna post on this thread, please be welcome!

Hey guys, this week it is the WTA Strasbourg , and two romanian girls were playing in the quali, Buzarnescu& Mihalache. Both played well but unfortunately didn't manage to win thier first match.
After Magda's matche I went close to her, I spoke to her in romanian please, ( because I lived there 3 years and I speak aa bit ^^) , so I ask her to do a photo with my sister and she agreed ! She was very nice !
Here is the pic :

Hey guys, this week it is the WTA Strasbourg , and two romanian girls were playing in the quali, Buzarnescu& Mihalache. Both played well but unfortunately didn't manage to win thier first match.
After Magda's matche I went close to her, I spoke to her in romanian please, ( because I lived there 3 years and I speak aa bit ^^) , so I ask her to do a photo with my sister and she agreed ! She was very nice !
Here is the pic :

Lovely lovely picture. Magda doesn't get alot of attention compared to the Romanians in the top 100 and some of the young ones coming up but personally I think Magda is every bit as stunningly lovely as Raluca and Sorana. She oozes personality too.